Haeil Jung

The impact of early childhood education on early achievement gaps : evidence from the Indonesia early childhood education and development (ECED) project

This paper assesses whether the Indonesia Early Childhood Education and Development project had an impact on early achievement gaps as measured by an array of child development outcomes and enrollment. The analysis is based on longitudinal data collected in 2009 and 2010 on approximately 3,000 four-year-old children residing in 310 villages located in nine districts across Indonesia. The study begins by documenting the intent-to-treat impact of the project. It then compares the achievement gaps between richer and poorer children living in project villages with those of richer and poorer children living in non-project villages. There is clear evidence that in project villages, the achievement gap between richer and poorer children decreased on many dimensions. By contrast, in non-project villages, this gap either increased or stayed constant. Given Indonesias interest in increasing access to early childhood services for all children, and the need to ensure more efficient spending on education, the paper discusses how three existing policies and programs could be leveraged to ensure that Indonesias vision for holistic, integrated early childhood services becomes a reality. The lessons from Indonesias experience apply more broadly to countries seeking to reduce early achievement gaps and expand access to pre-primary education.

The role of preschool quality in promoting child development: evidence from rural Indonesia*

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between preschool quality and children’s early development in a sample of over 7900 children enrolled in 578 preschools in rural Indonesia. Quality was measured by: (1) classroom observations using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R); (2) teacher characteristics; and (3) structural characteristics of preschools. Children’s development was measured using the Early Development Instrument (EDI). The article proposes two methodological improvements to preschool quality studies. First, an instrumental variable approach is used to correct for measurement error. Second, ECERS-R is adjusted to the local context by contrasting items with Indonesia’s national preschool standards. Results show that observed classroom quality is a significant and meaningful positive predictor of children’s development once models correct for measurement error and apply a locally-adapted measure of classroom quality. In contrast, teacher characteristics and structural characteristics are not significant predictors of child development, while holding observed classroom quality constant.

The Long-Term Impact of Incarceration During the Teens and 20s on the Wages and Employment of Men

This article examines the long-term impact of incarceration during the teens and 20s on labor market outcomes and its causal pathways via education and job experience. Using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this article finds that incarceration in youth correctional institutions significantly reduces wages and the total number of weeks worked per year at age 39 or 40 while incarceration during the 20s only lowers wages. Further, this study finds that incarceration in youth correctional institutions lowers education and job experience at age 39 or 40 while incarceration in the 20s only significantly depresses job experience.

Do Prison Work-Release Programs Improve Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes? Evidence from the Adult Transition Centers in Illinois

This study examines the impact of adult transition centers (ATCs) in Illinois on postimprisonment earnings and employment. As a work-release program, ATCs are designed to help state prisoners prepare for release through job training and employment opportunities. Using releases from minimum-security prisons as the comparison group, this study finds that ATC assignment modestly improves employment while successful ATC release positively affects earnings and employment. The possible selection bias and their implications for causal inference are discussed.

Do public pensions crowd out private transfers to the elderly?: evidence from South Korea

We investigate the impact of receiving a public pension on total expenditures, food expenditures, and private transfers of the elderly in South Korea. Using a natural experiment that occurred in 1999, we are able to explore the impacts of a large public pension program expansion which newly incorporated people who had been self-employed, unemployed, and out of the labor force. We find that receipt of a public pension did not allow the elderly to increase total expenditures or food expenditures because the expansion of public pensions largely crowded out financial transfers from adult children and/or own siblings.

The impact of early childhood education on early achievement gaps in Indonesia

This study assesses whether the Indonesia Early Childhood Education and Development (ECED) project had an impact on early achievement gaps as measured by an array of child development outcomes and enrolment. First, using a fixed-effects model with a difference-in-difference estimator that compares children in project villages with those in non-project villages, we find that the positive impacts are concentrated among poor children. Second, extending our fixed-effects model, we also find that the achievement gap between richer and poorer children in project villages decreased on many dimensions compared with the achievement gap in non-project villages.

Incarcerated Mothers’ Labor Market Outcomes

This study investigates how motherhood and foster care records of their children influence women’s transitions into the labor market after incarceration. Our fixed effects models examine the relative progress of incarcerated mothers in earnings and employment after incarceration, accounting for the difference between mothers and women without children and controlling for time-constant individual characteristics. Our analysis indicates that incarcerated mothers make impressive progress in quarterly employment during the second and third year after incarceration. Most of these increases are from mothers whose children started, but did not resolve, foster care before incarceration.

The Impact of Expanding Access to Early Childhood Education Services in Rural Indonesia

This paper examines the effects of an intervention that expanded access to low-cost, government-sponsored, community-based playgroups in rural Indonesia. Instrumental variables and difference-in-differences models indicate that while the intervention raised enrollment rates and durations of enrollment for everyone, on average, there was little impact on child development. The two models correspond to different durations of project exposure. The difference-in-differences model captures greater exposure and shows that there are modest and sustained impacts on child development—especially for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds. There is also evidence that the intervention encouraged substitution away from other services, such as kindergartens.

Impact evaluations in South Korea and China

ABSTRACT While evidence-based policy-making is increasingly in demand, as new policies are required to bring effective results to targeted groups in South Korea and China, few studies have investigated the progress of quantitative impact evaluation that focuses on causality. This paper studies the trends of quantitative impact evaluation of public policy in South Korea and China by surveying major public administration and public policy journals in these two countries from 2000 to 2015. Among published articles in the major journals, our study pool includes research articles directly related to quantitative impact evaluation. Our study found that there has been considerable progress in impact evaluation research in South Korea and China in both data quality and empirical methods. However, empirical impact evaluation still comprises a small fraction (only one to two percent) of all research in public administration and public policy in both countries. We also found limited discussion on the selection mechanism and related bias in South Korea even in recent years, while causality and selection bias have been more commonly discussed in China. Also, advanced empirical methods are more frequently observed in journal articles in China than those in South Korea.

Investing in school readiness : an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of early childhood education pathways in rural Indonesia

This paper presents evidence on the cost-effectiveness of early childhood education pathways in rural Indonesia. It documents the existence of substantial differences in school readiness between 6 to 9 year old children. Using detailed enrollment histories, it unpacks whether and how early education experiences explain these gaps. The analysis considers not only the sequence of services children enroll in, but also the age at which they enroll and the duration for which they enroll. The differences in primary school test scores between a child who has no early education exposure and a child who completes a full sequence at the developmentally appropriate age are 0.42 standard deviations in language and 0.43 standard deviations in mathematics, roughly equivalent to an additional 0.9 to 1.2 years of primary schooling. The paper analyzes the cost-effectiveness of various early education pathways in Indonesia to show that providing access to both playgroups and kindergartens to young children at developmentally appropriate ages can optimize public investments in early childhood education. The paper subjects the analysis to a variety of robustness checks, and concludes that children enrolled in play-based early education programs (playgroups) at age 3 or 4, followed by the countrys more academically structured programs (kindergartens) at age 5 or 6, are more likely to be ready for primary school than children who do not follow this sequence. Compulsory pre-primary education policy should consider incorporating both playgroups and kindergartens.